Spooky Chocolate Popcorn

Oh look, another glorious Monday morning. It makes me sick! That’s right, it’s Hocus Pocus season. Halloween is right around the corner. And there’s nothing scarier than putting on a pair of jeans after you’ve been within arms reach of Halloween candy for the past few weeks. Or worse, when you get zero trick-or-treaters and you’ve got a bucket full of delicious temptation staring you right back in the face. No need to be afraid – I’ve got the perfect Halloween snack that’s guilt free and doesn’t require any hocus pocus to whip up: Spooky Chocolate Popcorn. Made with low-calorie SkinnyPop Popcorn, this treat is covered with a dark chocolate drizzle and a few pieces of candy corn and candy eyeballs.

I’m a SkinnyPop addict, and always have a few single-serve bags of it at my desk at work to curb my afternoon snack attacks. Well, I had a whole supply of SkinnyPop until my coworkers decided they were equally addicted and have started to swipe my supply. But at just 40 calories a cup, who can blame them? Being The Salted Cookie, I of course have a huge sweet tooth. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and M&Ms are two things I can’t say no to. So I’ve been looking for ways to get my chocolate fix this Halloween season, without having to buy stretchier pants as a result.

The key to this recipe is using quality dark chocolate. I am a fan of using the Ghirardelli dark-chocolate melting wafers, since I am notorious for burning and ruining regular chocolate chips when I try to melt them. Once I melted the chocolate, I used a small spatula to drizzle the chocolate evenly over the salty popcorn. I had a handful of candy corn leftover (leftover from the bag I opened and was eating for no reason) and candy eyeballs from another recipe, so I put a handful of each into the melted chocolate blobs that I had drizzled.

And while candy corn doesn’t exactly fit into your recommended daily serving of vegetables, having a few pieces sprinkled in this sweet treat is much healthier than how most of us like to enjoy candy corn: by the handful and eventually the bagful. After the chocolate sets in the fridge, break up the popcorn into chunks and serve in a large bowl or package up in mini containers as an easy gift. I picked up these Halloween tins from the dollar aisle at Target to put a few servings of the spooky popcorn in.

So if you are looking for a healthier fix than traditional Halloween treats have to offer, whip up a batch of this Spooky Chocolate Popcorn before you run amuck, amuck, amuck!